An Interrater Reliability Study of Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) Raw and Complexity-Adjusted Scores

Recently, the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, & Erdberg, 2011 ) was introduced to overcome some possible limitations of the Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2003 ) while continuing its efforts to link Rorschach inferences to their evidence base. An important, technical modification to the scoring system is that R-PAS interpretations are based on both standard scores and complexity-adjusted scores. Two previous U.S. studies reported good to excellent interrater reliability (IRR) for the great majority of R-PAS variables; however, IRR of complexity-adjusted scores has never been investigated. Furthermore, no studies have yet investigated R-PAS IRR in Europe. To extend this literature, we examined R-PAS IRR of Page 1 and Page 2 raw and complexity-adjusted scores with 112 Italian Rorschach protocols. We collected a large sample of both clinical and nonclinical Rorschach protocols, each of which was coded separately by 2 independent raters. Results demonstrated a mean intraclass correlation of .78 (SD = .14) for raw scores and.74 (SD = .14) for complexity-adjusted scores. Overall, for both raw and complexity-adjusted values, most of the variables were characterized by good to excellent IRR.